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Handwritten is a place and space for pen and paper. We showcase things in handwriting, but also on handwriting. And so, you'll see dated letters and distant postcards alongside recent studies and typed stories.

HW Blog

On January 23rd, 2016, Handwritten celebrated National Handwriting Day by showcases international alphabets. We opened a call to hand-writers around the world, and received characters of all kinds, including invented alphabets, like the one above by writer and artist Tatiana Roumelioti. Halfway through the day, we even received four letters from The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, which are forthcoming in their new anthology Pen to Paper. Though we celebrate on this scale once a year, the pen party never stops. Enjoy the work we received below, and stay tuned for our celebration in 2017.

1. Creative Quotables.

2. Letters from The Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

3. Poems from around the world.

4. Invented, Real, Permanent, No Longer.

5. Messages of Love.

6. #BICDROP

What does seeing all this make you want to do? Hopefully, pick up a pen. But after such an incredibly fun and wide-reaching celebration of handwriting this past weekend, all we can think about doing is one giant #bicdrop. And thanks to our brilliant graphics design, Megan Sykes, for providing us with a way to express this feeling.

One of the most common shared experiences of second generation Chinese American kids everywhere is spending three hours every Saturday morning at Chinese school — often held at empty high schools, in community centers, or in rented spaces above storefronts — from the age of 5 to about 18. And one of the very first things said kids were taught is how to write the Chinese alphabet, otherwise known as Zhuyin fuhao (注音符號).

Or, in plainer terms, bopomofo. The form is phonetic, so it's possible to read an entire page of the characters without knowing what exactly you're saying. But, as times have changed, so has language, and the language system is no longer widely taught, if at all. Now, in place of thing phonetic characters, kids are learning the pinyin system — phonetics written in English letters.

At work today, Handwritten curator Carly Butler shares International Handwriting Day with colleagues and customers. So far, they have collected handwriting in Vietnamese, Punjabi, Mandarin, English, Spanish, and to top it off, backwards cursive. That's right, backwards cursive. #bicdrop